In many information processing systems, contention can arise between processes for access to shared resources. For example, in a distributed computing system, multiple processes running on different compute nodes may all need to execute processing operations that would result in modification of the same stored data item. Conventional approaches to addressing such contention involve the multiple processes executing a consensus protocol to elect a particular one of the processes as a “leader” having priority in access to a given shared resource. An example of a conventional consensus protocol is Paxos. Other techniques for leader election are known in the art and include Apache Zookeeper.